On 23/05/2019 20:58, Nick Bolten wrote (in the "solving iD conflict" thread:
OSM needs an alternative for community tagging discussions outside of
these mailing lists. Ones that people will actually use and that have
a reasonable, community-oriented code of conduct. I have talked to 10X
more people about my `crossing` proposals outside of this mailing list
(in-person, personal emails, slack, etc.) and the differences could
not be more stark ...
Nick,
I don't doubt your last sentence at all - but these people are all (in
some sense) people like you. They're people that you know personally
well enough to meet personally or exchange emails with, or from a
geographically-centred community (Slack) that you have both joined.
These people are essentially self-selecting - they will interact the
same way as you, and are probably more likely to agree with you.
OSM is a global project. By that very definition there will be people
who don't share your views, approach or language, yet it the map belongs
to everyone, and sometimes we have to find ways to talk to each other
because we need to talk about stuff that applies to everyone. Sometimes
people talk in ways that don't (to borrow Simon's phrase) "wrap any
criticism in multiple layers of cotton wool". This list has an owner,
and although some list owners are more active than others OSM mailing
lists have certainly warned people in the past when people have e.g.
made unsolicited allegations.
The problem with "an alternative for community tagging discussions
outside of these mailing lists ... that have a reasonable,
community-oriented code of conduct" is that it sounds like you want to
set rules about who is allowed to participate in those discussions and
who is not, and that people that would be allowed to participate are (in
some sense) "people like you".
I'd actually like to make it easier rather than harder for people to
take part in international discussions - features on the web site such
as changeset discussion comments (and even indirectly the report
buttons) are a way of stimulating conversation between people who are
united only in the fact that they're editing the same map. When
communicating with people on behalf of the DWG (and when suggesting how
people communicate with others) I've always suggested trying to send
something in the recipient's own language. Even if it's a machine
translation and a bit rubbish they will hopefully understand that "some
other human being is trying to communicate with me".
Various OSM communities have tried different communication mechanisms.
Lots of OSM people in the US love Slack, whereas I suspect that a number
of German OSMers would run a mile if asked to use it (a bit too
corporate). The subset of OSMers in the UK that are part of the "OS UK
chapter" are using a closed discussion board called "Loomio", but as a
volume communications mechanism it's not been a success - there's much
less traffic there than https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
. OSM's a distributed project, and different communities will pick what
works for them, but there still needs to be an open way to communicate
internationally - you shouldn't have to pass a test that you can "wrap
messages in cotton wool" before joining.
It's perfectly reasonable for a group designing something that's part of
OSM to need a space away from the hubbub to discuss things; that's why
github issues get closed and locked. It's even OK (if arguably somewhat
ill-advised) to write what was written in
https://github.com/openstreetmap/iD/issues/6409#issuecomment-495231649
which among various other inflammatory stuff seems to say "it doesn't
matter how right you are and how wrong we are; we'll do it anyway";
what's not OK is to expect people not to call the author out on that and
it's not OK to try and shut down the wider discussion (e.g. on this
mailing list).
To be clear, this isn't just about iD, or mailing lists, or Slack, or
USA mappers vs German mappers. I've seen a few examples around the
world recently with a DWG hat on where a bunch of people decided to do
X, but some other people somehow didn't know about it and complained.
The first bunch of people could perhaps have tried to make things a bit
more public, but they probably didn't realise they hadn't done this as
they were using the communications channel that "everyone" uses (in a
few specific examples I can think of that was Telegram, Slack, or a
subforum at forum.osm.org). The second bunch of people complain that
something happened that they weren't expecting and that it was
wrong/undiscussed/some other sort of problem. Everyone's acting in good
faith - they're trying to do the right thing but somehow communication
doesn't quite occur. What everyone (including me) needs to try and do
is to say "OK, that didn't quite work; how do we try and make it work
better next time?" I'm sure that the answer to that last question isn't
choosing who can and who can't be part of the discussion.
Best Regards,
Andy
(a member of the Data Working Group but writing in an entirely personal
capacity, obviously)
_______________________________________________
Tagging mailing list
Tagging@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging
